love it, I love it… And this is your home, your choice.”
“Did you let your other tenants pick the colors for their walls?” she asked, already assuming the answer.
“My other tenants didn’t move in before the apartments were done… And I didn’t care about my other tenants’ happiness like I care about yours.”
Enchanting him was intoxicating. Being close to each other was always the catalyst, he was right. Every time they were near each other, something happened. The air changed, the atmosphere charged, and her whole world became him… Though with the amount of time he spent in her thoughts, Poppy wasn’t sure her world was going to be anything else for long.
“Do you want to paint with me?” she asked, sorry that she couldn’t touch him.
Maybe that was the key to them getting past their attraction. Paint. It was all over her hands, so she couldn’t touch him without covering him in it too.
“You shouldn’t have bare feet in here. You could hurt yourself.”
Poppy’s first thought was how he knew her feet were bare, then she realized her foot was sliding up and down the back of his thigh. Pressing her arch into him, she was rubbing him hard, begging for something. She hadn’t even known she was doing it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quickly hooking her heel onto the ladder again. “Did I get paint on you?”
With him so close, Poppy couldn’t check for herself.
Turner was in no rush to back off. “You think I care?” he asked, surprising her by crouching just enough to hook an arm under her skirt so he could curve his hand around her calf.
Instead of putting her foot back where it had been, he guided her leg all the way around him, clamping her thigh against his hip with a sure hand.
Her heart was pumping so hard and fast that she could feel her pulse between her legs. “I can’t touch you,” she said, reminding herself of the paint and the brush occupying her hands.
“You being good, Candy-Cane?”
Damn. That deep growl of a voice seduced her so fast that she understood what he’d meant about hers.
“No,” she said, not pulling back even when his mouth got closer. “I’m dirty.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, the innuendo obvious in his tone and drowsy eyes.
Poppy laughed. “Not like that. I’m actually dirty.”
Leaning back, she wiggled her fingers in front of his face, showing him the paint on her digits. Without saying anything, he curled his long fingers around her wrist and drew her hand to his chest, smearing the paint down the front of his otherwise pristine black tee-shirt.
“Oh, boy,” she whispered, gasping for breath when he liberated the brush from her other hand only to drop it onto the floor. He was never careless, not normally, not ever. “Turner…”
Guiding both of her arms around his neck, he didn’t hesitate to do the same with her other leg and held them against him, preventing her from going anywhere. Her ass was just perched on the rung of the ladder at her back; he was holding her… at his mercy.
Still, he said nothing. His head moved slightly, one way, then the other, as his gaze scrutinized every nuance of her face. Whatever he was doing, she wanted him to keep doing it. No man had ever made love to her with his eyes before, but that’s what it felt like. He was everywhere, inside her, around her, occupying and claiming her.
Their position had to break his rules, but it was that devouring gaze that felt erotic. Even in her bridesmaid’s dress, Poppy felt utterly exposed. Completely open to him, like every single part of her was surrendered to him. She’d thought that he owned her, but it was then, in that second, she admitted defeat.
“He said he was in love with me,” Poppy said, enjoying Turner’s sensual consumption so much that the words just tumbled out of her. “My sister’s groom. The Ritchie Rich who my sister wanted to marry… We were all there at the altar and instead of saying I do, he… he said he loved me.”
“Did you love him?”
Grabbing her own elbows, tightening her embrace around him, Poppy salved her lower lip with her tongue, catching it in her teeth for a brief second only to let it slip free.
“He wasn’t in love with me,” she said. “He just… wasn’t in love with her. I was an excuse.”